Former missionaries to Ecuador now doing Hispanic ministry in Missouri...Enjoy the updates and pictures...feel free to leave comments or email us. Dios les bendiga/God bless y'all!

Saturday, August 16, 2008

more volunteer pics and a video of Evan

Here's some more pics of the ag project, these are all in Las Palmeras. I also have a video of Evan at the end. This first one is of Ramon vaccinating a guinea pig or 'cuy' as they are known here in Ecuador. They were given this name for the sound they make. As many may know, guinea pigs are eaten here. We've had the tasty rodent treat about 5 times or so. It's not my favorite, but it's not bad either. Well, we vaccinated about 100 guinea pigs or more. The people were quite surprised that we were vaccinating them because that is not a common practice. However, it really helps them a lot, as they tend to get sick and die fairly easily. Here's Ramon vaccinating a goat, along with Gabriel. We saw a ton of goats and sheep there in Las Palmeras. I had probably never seen so many goats and sheep in all my life. We also vaccinated several cows out there. We had a pretty good rodeo in one area as they were a bunch of wild cows in that one area. That was pretty fun but I'm glad no one got hurt. Here's Gabriel with a baby goat that was given to him by the Pastor's family. He carried it around and it followed us around like a puppy dog. Here's l-r, Gonzalo, me & Evan (the reason my pants are wet is that he took the liberty of urinating on me again...I'm glad he hasn't done that in a while!), Ramon, and Gabriel (along with his goat that spent the night at our house).Well, Ramon and I went to Chumillos the other day as I had mentioned. We had quite a good time out there. We vaccinated about 30 cows and 12 pigs. We also castrated 3 pigs, I got to do one of them. We also put up a couple of seedbeds as well. We had a particularly good opportunity to share with a young woman that I ask you to pray for, along with her family and the whole community. Her name is Marcelina. We prayed with all that we visited and we worked with church members and non-church members. Lastly, we planned to have a bigger project there on Thurs. Aug 28. We ask you to pray for this as well. The pastor should invite the community and everyone will bring there animals and it will be kind of an event. We have invited Gabriel to come back and help us as well. We hope to have the whole community there to do the project and we also hope to show a Christian movie at the end of it. I'll have to put pictures from Chumilllos on another time. We also went to church there last Sun and after the project last Thurs, I went on a little hike to a mountain top and got to see some Incan ruins as well. As I said before, I hope to have some pics of this on another time. I want to close with a video of Evan from a few days ago. He is beginning to make some noises, as you will see. I also wanted to let you all know that we'll be leaving Ecuador on Sept. 15, that is one month from yesterday. While we are excited to go back to the States and see friends and family there, we have a lot to do before we leave...and a big part of that is packing! I ask you all to pray again as we finish.